Triple treat

PINOY KASI


Triple treat
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 00:54am (Mla time) 12/29/2006

Published on Page A13 of the December 29, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

FOR A year-end treat, i'm doing three topics today, all revolving around the holiday season but with a bit of an anthropological reading of the signs of the times.

Breaking the stereotypes of "Filipino time," my friends were texting in Christmas greetings as early as the morning of Dec. 24. I guess people were trying to beat the Christmas midnight text crunch. The Indians used to have an "Hinglish" (Hindi-English) word for this: "prepone" as opposed to postpone.

A few observations about these preponed greetings--in case you're doing these again for the New Year:

The majority of the ones I got were unsigned. Make sure to identify yourself.

Something else that caught my attention was the language of greetings. Predictably, English dominated. I got only three messages in Tagalog, and one each in Cebuano and Ilonggo.

We really should send more local language greetings. Here's a simple Ilonggo New Year's greeting: Mabungahong bag-ong tuig! If you want a long Cebuano greeting from your family to your friends and their significant others, here's a kilometric one: Ang akong banay nanghinaut nga ikaw ug ang imong mga pinalangga makatagamtam ug kalinaw, kalipay, kahimsug ug kalambuan karon ug sa umaabot nga mga katuigan.

A poignant Filipino greeting would be these lines from the Christmas carol by Felipe de Leon, composed right after World War II: Ang gabi ay payapa, lahat ay tahimik. Pati mga tala sa bughaw ng langit. Kay hinhin ng hangin, wari'y umiibig sa kapayapaan ng buong daigdig. The lyrics make the carol appropriate for the New Year as well.

On the lighter side, one of the preponed greetings I got from a colleague in UP went this way: Gloria stops con-ass, delays con-con, reskeds ASEAN summit, so B4 she postpones Christmas 2, let me greet u & ur family a MERRY CHRISTMAS & a HAPPY NEW YEAR. Just modify message for the New Year and send out as early as you can.

And for next year's Christmas, save this favorite of mine, attributed to Prof. Bien Lumbera: Parang lumang pabango/Ang Maligayang Pasko/Samyuin, angkinin mo/Pagbating laging bago! (My loose translation: Like old perfume, savor, cherish Merry Christmas, a greeting that's always new.)

What's this
Need to pick up some last-minute gifts? I'd do it at the Sidcor market that's held every Sunday morning at the Lung Center.

It's been several years now since the energetic Susa Arcega first organized Sidcor, yet every Sunday is still an experience. Because of the variety of products, each time I go there, I'm bound to hear, several times, "What's this?" and "What's that?"

Involve the family in a discovery tour for everything--from homemade cakes to tutti-frutti children's sneakers from Chile. List local foods for the kids to track down in the market. They can even draw up their own lists using recipes and information from the Internet sites specializing in Filipino foods (try stefoodie.net and pinoyfoodtalk.net). I'm going to name some of the stuff they can look for but, unfortunately, I don't have too many vendors' names to give you, mainly because the stalls don't have signs.

Train your young gourmet cooks to go through the vegetable stalls and ask them to look for different kinds of onions. Get them to match the local names (e.g., sibuyas Tagalog) with the fancy English ones (shallots, scallions). Have them look up luyang mura (young ginger), katuray flowers, kalabasa flowers and various kinds of mushrooms. Have them concoct their own blend of tea with tanglad (lemongrass) and kalamansi.

Here's one to test their skills: ask them to look for pako (fern) that's edible. Hint: the stall that sells this also has great pancit hab-hab.

Here's another challenging one: Ask them to get different types of camote, and to differentiate these from ube and something called yacon, a tuber originally from the Andes region in Latin America. Yacon can be eaten as is, a snack food or mixed into a salad. Try it with the pako and lato (seaweeds) that you can find in the fish stalls.

Look for Aling Narsing, who sells the best sinaing na tawilis and sinaing na tulingan there. You'll have to explain to the kids what that kind of cooking involves (I just learned it involves pork, so do be careful) and what those fish are. (Tawilis is freshwater sardinella and tulingan is Pacific bluefin tuna.)

Bring them around the gardening section for another educational tour--from tiny potted herbs to the giant tree ferns.

Teach kids about fermentation by looking for native vinegars and wines. One man sells three varieties of Ilokano basi, as well as sukang Iloko or vinegar.

There's a lot of local produce around that would make for good last-minute gifts, with Batangas barako coffee and kasoy being among the best choices. For the finest tikog mats from Samar, there's one stall close to the entrance of the Lung Center. Last week that stall had something I haven't seen for years now: gauze cotton mosquito nets from Ilocos!

Culture of pain
The BBC newscasts about the Christmas tragedy in Ormoc first described how the fireworks had set off the conflagration, and then commented on how, despite repeated tragedies, Filipinos continue to insist on using pyrotechnics.

It did occur to me that New Year's Eve seems to bring out our culture of pain, both the sadism (pleasure from inflicting pain) and masochism (pleasure derived from the pain itself). There's no lack of warnings in the mass media, including grisly TV footage of hands with missing fingers, blinded eyes, burn injuries. Maybe it's because we don't see enough of the less dramatic but even more tragic sequels, such as the slow and painful deaths from watusi poisoning and the tetanus that develop from the wounds.

But I also wonder if it's sadism that makes us insist on engaging in dangerous New Year's revelry. It's not so much courting danger for ourselves as putting others at risk--for example, in the way some of us throw lit firecrackers at each other.

I wonder about the advice to avoid firecrackers and "just" use noise-makers. I've seen adults deriving perverse pleasure from blowing trumpets into the ears of little children. This year, too, a new product that's become popular is a "bazooka" gadget made out of PVC pipes. The gadget ignites methyl alcohol to set off a deafening blast, so there are chemical hazards involved. And since it's mounted on the shoulder, you can imagine what it can do to one's hearing faculties.

And those who insist on firing guns, they're really pretending to be men--little boys who never grew up. You'll just have to remind them that even when they shoot into the air, the bullets need to come back down, sometimes with fatal results.

Take extra precautions with the vulnerable: the very young, the elderly; and don't forget your pets, keep them inside the house especially around midnight. It's one thing to live dangerously, and another to put people, children especially, in harm's way. Let's start the New Year right, and break free from our culture of pain.